Gmail now 3 gigs

This may have been in place for a while but I noticed it just now - Gmail now provides 3 gigabytes of email storage:

[...] To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

Curious, but my Gmail account shows the new total storage capacity as 2493 gigabytes. Not quite 3 gigs, but I'm not complaining.

Comments

[Drew B's take on tech PR]

Mine's 2494gb too - not noticed it going up to 3 yet, but doubt I'll ever use it all up anyway!

[Nevon]

Reading your comment, Drew, I noticed a teeny typo in my post (and in your comment).

The actual storage space is 2494 megabytes, not gigabytes. Equivalent to 2.494 gigabytes.

Even as 2.4 gigs, it's a lot of space. I doubt I'll use it all for email either - but there is a way to use it as a sort of remote hard drive for storing things:

http://www.nevon.net/nevon/2005/03/use_gmail_as_a_.html

[Tony Bowden]

They didn't increase it in one big leap. The amount of space available is rising every second! If you go to the Gmail home page (you'll probably need to log out first), you can actually watch the amount of space available rising in real time, through a very nice use of JavaScript.

Tony

[Craig]

This should never have been posted. I can't believe you dared to publish such a question without doing any research whatsoever. This piece of widely known, freely available information can be explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Two_gigabytes_of_storage

As you should have been able to figure out, the "we are giving you an extra gig of storage" message was FROM their birthday. Immediately following that sentence, they explain what you just posted a question about.

You should be in jail.

[Da' Vi]

GMAIL IS MUCH BETTER THEN AOL'S "AIM" CRAP.I HOPE IN THE NEAR FURTURE GMAIL HAS IT'S OWN INSTANT MESSENGER.

[Ad]

Like Tony said - the one year birthday was on April 1st, which is when they added an extra gig, taking the limit from 1 gig to 2 gig. So rather than being half a gig down, you're actually half a gig up on their statement!

[Martin Porcheron]

Acutally 2494 megabytes is 2.43554688 gigabytes not 2.494 gigabytes. Bytes are imperial, bits are metric.

[Nevon]

Ad, you're right, the storage space did go up from 1 to 2 gigs some months back. But what I'm talking about here is the increase from 2 to 3 gigs.

Interesting point, Tony. I just looked at the figure in my Gmail account - and the space total now says a precise 2500 megs. Roughly 2.5 gigs.

Martin, thanks for the technical correction ;)

[Ad]

But what increase from 2 to 3 gigs? The statement says "Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able.". At no point do they mention 3 gigs, or any other target.

[Nevon]

Ad, you're actually quite right to be confused, and it looks like it's me doing the confusing.

I've taken a long look at the info on Gmail regarding this 3 gigs space, especially the What's New page in the Gmail Help Center: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/whatsnew.html

That's where I got all excited! What happened was I noticed a text in red at the top of my Gmail window which said "New features!" I clicked on that which took me to the What's New page. There I read about increased storage space, and then noticed that my space had indeed increased beyond 2 gigs. Hence the post.

Now it looks like this isn't new at all. It would help a lot if Google dated the What's New page.

Sorry for confusing everyone ;)